A lot has been happening in the Leonora gold district of Western Australia, from both inorganic and organic growth angles. Genesis Minerals is rapidly advancing its Leonora gold project.
Development activities at Genesis’ Ulysses mine (within the Leonora project) are set to commence in the June quarter of 2023, with open-pit mining to be followed by underground mining at Ulysses West and Ulysses Central.
In the immediate term, Genesis will be focused on pre-development activities at Ulysses, including grade control drilling to “future-proof” the mine’s first two years of operation.
Recent high-grade intercepts include 7m at 11.3 grams per tonne (g/t), 8m at 7.4g/t, 9m at 5.7g/t and 6m at 7g/t.
The emerging gold miner also continued to explore its broader two-million-ounce Leonora gold project, having achieved recent high-grade hits at its Admiral prospect and encouraging findings at the Puzzle North discovery.
Having completed a $100 million capital raise during the September quarter, Genesis has $91.5 million cash as of September 30. The company had $16.1 million on hand on June 30.
Genesis recently acquired majority control of Dacian Gold, seeing the latter’s milling infrastructure and exploration upside as a natural addition to the business.
Dacian suspended mining at its Mt Morgans project in WA in June amid rising cost pressures. Its Mt Morgans processing plant has the capacity to treat 2.5 million tonnes of ore per annum.
Genesis managing director Raleigh Finlayson said everything was moving in the right direction for the company.
“With a controlling interest in Dacian, Genesis has taken the first step towards making our vision of building the premium Australian gold miner a reality,” he said.
“We are now excited to be working together to maximise shareholder value from the sensible pairing of Dacian’s large-scale mill and exploration upside with Genesis’ organic growth including the new shovel-ready Ulysses project.”
Genesis has also been in deal talks with St Barbara regarding regional consolidation in Leonora, with discussions confirmed by Genesis in early June.
At the recent Diggers & Dealers conference in Kalgoorlie, Finlayson said talks with St Barbara were continuing but refrained from going into much more detail.
“Having done extensive DD (due diligence) on each other’s assets, we can see operational synergies that can pair the right rocks with the right mills, the right skills with the right minds and provide operational levers to de-risk assets to the benefit of shareholders,” he said.
Red 5 has also confirmed it has been in discussions with St Barbara regarding potential merger and acquisition (M&A) activity.
Shortly following Red 5’s reports, St Barbara issued a statement suggesting its conversations with Red 5 were “very preliminary in nature” and “incomplete”, and that there was no certainty of an agreement being reached.